Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Luke 10:21-24

I forget how hard this can be to get going again - inspiration isn't flowing for any of my projects these days, and I tend to forget between Lents and Advents how hard it is to write an entry that's only one day or so in the making.

"No one knows who the Son is except the Father,
and who the Father is except the Son
and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him."

First we're told that God has hidden the truth from the wise and learned (two different things) in favor of revealing it to the childlike, then we have it spelled out in no uncertain terms: we can't reach an understanding of God or God's plan (even just the part for us) by any feats of our own little minds. We accept it as a gift.

I feel like we hear about that a lot, God's gifts, especially this time of year. But perhaps we're more (and always have been) trapped in a Black Friday mindset more than we realize. Because I, at least, always think of that in terms of things of this world. I am grateful for the food I eat and the comfort I've been raised in certainly - I'm also grateful for the gorgeous world around me, and I'm thankful for the amazing human relationships that I've had the pleasure to enjoy and hopefully nurture. I'm grateful that Jesus saved me, that I have the promise of heaven and reunification with dead loved ones. I'm grateful for the talents I have.

And I do think of it occasionally, but not nearly as much: I'm grateful to know God in my life. I'm grateful to have been raised as I was, so firmly and thoroughly in the Catholic Church - that it was the true face of God to Whom I was first introduced. I'm grateful for what I've called in the past my Gift of Certainty. My great gift of faith.

Even that's not a quality of our own. Even that is a gift from God. Even that is something not owing to us but to Him.

Really, how can we thank Him?

I feel like that would be a tidy, succinct ending for this entry, but I want to mention one more thing. I had a thought I wrote down not too long ago. It was an idea for a potential kind of litmus test for your feelings on religion, and maybe it bears thought: if every other part of your religion were still true, but there was no afterlife, would you still be glad of the time you spent?

Would you still be glad of God's presence in your life?

Would you still feel what a gift it was?

I sometimes feel vaguely heretical in this posts (and like most proposed litmus tests I thought of it because I put myself on the "right" side of it), but perhaps that's also the reason why it upsets me so much that a person of faith would store up brownie points to get into heaven or out of fear of hell.

Eternal salvation, don't get me wrong, is probably the biggest and greatest gift of God.

I'm just suggesting: for the lucky ones, maybe it's the greatest gift save one. The gift of faith in the first place. The gift of faith to believe in Him.